Planning and organization are essential points in almost everything that needs to be done, and education is no exception. When teachers plan the unit effectively prior to the instruction, they may reflect on the correct necessities of the students and how the objectives are going to be accomplished. The Houston Independent School District suggests that a unit plan is an organizational approach that helps teachers reflect upon what students need to accomplish in each unit, and how and when they will accomplish it. (2015). That means when a unit is planned in advance, all the strategic activities are focused directly on the goal of the students’ learning in order to give them more opportunities for engagement and a better understanding of the topics.
After identifying standards and learning objectives, developing a table of Activities/Strategies could be very convenient. The following is an example of a Curriculum Plan Table of Activities/Strategies designed for a unit plan “Typography.”
Unit Learning Activities
| Activity/Strategy Description | Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Level: | Resources and Instructional Tools |
| Activity/Strategy #1: Direct Instruction Students will be learning by teacher demonstration the foundations of typography, its uses in the industry, and how to make a creative typography example using Photoshop. Students will be following the teacher’s instructions on their computers, doing the same project example that the teacher is creating. | Remembering | Smart Board Computer Adobe Photoshop Instructional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sByzHoiYFX0 |
| Activity/Strategy #2: Concept Mapping The teacher will explain the initial instructions to explain the use of an animated typographic cheat sheet. Then, students will classify the type terms in a paper through concept mapping. | Analyzing | Smart Board Computer Graphic Organizer Sketchbook The animated typographic cheat sheet: https://www.supremo.co.uk/typeterms/ |
| Activity/Strategy #3: Problem-based-learning Students will be working on the creation of an example of typographic design by using their own ideas, types, colors, and shapes for the project. The final product will be a printed brochure. | Create | Computer Adobe Photoshop Sketchbook. |
Students will be doing diverse activities in order to guarantee the acquisition of knowledge by approaching the use of different methods of learning, such as direct instruction, sometimes a teacher-centered learning environment, and student-centered learning. Depending on students’ needs, it is sometimes convenient to use direct instruction at the beginning of a topic to engage and provide them with basic skills. Subsequently, they may continue developing the knowledge by themselves, applying the acquired skills.
There is no unique teaching strategy that may help students to develop new skills. Using different teaching approaches, depending on the topic and the student’s needs, teachers must evaluate the best strategies. However, those strategies need to be planned in advance to have a clear idea of how to achieve the unit goals, how to meet the standards, how to address all students’ needs, and how to evaluate the students’ acquired new knowledge through the assessments.
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